Welcome to For Your Consideration, an unapologetically obsessive weekly conversation about the Oscar race. Between now and March 2, 2014,Vanity Fair digital director Michael Hogan andHuffington Post senior entertainment editor Christopher Rosen will survey the landscape in advance of the 86th annual Academy Awards.

Michael Hogan: Hey Chris! Man, it feels like just yesterday that we were the only two idiots talking about awards season. Now, you can’t run a wet rag over the mantelpiece while singing “Live and Let Die” at the top of your lungs without stumbling on a critics’ awards ceremony or a year-end Top 10/20/50 list.

Not to brag but in just four days this week, I saw The Wolf of Wall Street, Inside Llewyn Davis, Saving Mr. Banks, and American Hustle. And I guess this is the part where I admit that I hadn’t seen Saving Mr. Banks when I stole your thunder and picked it to win Best Picture over at Gold Derby, on the cynical theory that Hollywood simply can’t resist a heartwarming film about the redemptive power of Hollywood storytelling—especially one starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks.

Now that I’ve seen the movie, I have to say I’m revising my opinion. Thompson deserves her considerable Oscar buzz, and Tom Hanks is just as charming as you’d expect, but Saving Mr. Banks doesn’t always transcend its status as a family-friendly tearjerker. And that’s fine! As one veteran Oscar watcher said to me at the American Hustle premiere, “It’s not supposed to win Best Picture. It’s charming!”

And yet, something needs to win, doesn’t it? The normal people I know all seem to assume 12 Years a Slave will take home the big award, but not every awards nut is convinced. Even those who believe it’s the best movie of the year are worried that voters won’t be able to bring themselves to pop the disk in the DVD player. It would be a real travesty if this exquisitely made film lost simply because too many people were afraid to give it a chance, but I suppose it could happen.

Don’t get me wrong, Chris: I loved a lot of these movies, even most of them. I’m just telling you why none of them has been able to credibly challenge 12 Years as this thing heads into the homestretch.

What’s your take? Do you think 12 Years will make a big showing when the SAG and Golden Globe nominations are announced later this week, thereby cementing its front-runner status once and for all? Will some other contender emerge from the crowded field and make a go of it? Or are we going to spend the next month throwing a dart at this mess and hoping it sticks to something good?

Chris Rosen:Can I cast a vote for the dart? At this point, that feels at least as legitimate as any of the other 13 movies you mentioned here.

Which is to say that this one, for once, is wide open. You think 12 Years a Slaveis the consensus? I think it can’t even sweep the critics’ awards. If even those groups can’t get behind Steve McQueen’s film, will Oscar voters? These are, after all, people who didn’t even want to attend awards screenings for 12 Years back when there weren’t a dozen other options vying for their attention.

What to make of 12 Years a Slave, the Oscar front-runner as dictated by Kyle Buchanan’s September blog post on Vulture? It should get a good bump this week: Figure on at least four SAG nods, including Best Ensemble, and a plethora of Golden Globe citations as well. That’s great, but as this season stretches forward, 12 Yearsis starting to remind me of last year’s Lincoln: lots of respect, lots of nominations, not a lot of passion.

So where is the passion? Nowhere yet, or so it seems. There are two movies, though, that have the necessary ingredients to pull away, at least to me: American Hustle and Saving Mr. Banks.

I won’t bore you with more of my reasons for thinking Mr. Banks gets Disney its elusive Best Picture win—we did that before, and everything still holds true. In the favor of Hustle, though, is that it’s just so much damn fun. Sometimes, that plays a role: The Departed and Slumdog Millionaireboth won Best Picture, in part, because of energy. You want to watch those movies. American Hustle is the same way, and it has the added juice of being David O. Russell’s third trip to the rodeo in four years. That, too, can matter, as a guy like Peter Jackson can attest. I think there’s a big push coming for American Hustle, an opinion that surely makes Oscar pros like Sasha Stone and Kris Tapley roll their eyes.

Or maybe it’s Scorsese’s turn again? DoesThe Wolf of Wall Street pick up a late surge of momentum, buoyed by the later Oscar date? (The Oscars are on March 2; we’ve got a long way to go.) More important: Does Paramount’s FYC package for the film come with shots of penicillin?

Hogan: Someone recently told me there was a wellspring of support forThe Wolf of Wall Street—was it you, Chris? I’m starting to get my Oscar experts mixed up. Scorsese certainly serves up an intoxicating mix of sex, drugs, money, and rampant, rapacious self-indulgence, with killer performances by Leonardo DiCaprio and the surprisingly great Margot Robbie. And yet, call me old-fashioned but I tend to assume that a movie clocking in at three full hours (O.K., 2:59) will eventually deliver some kind of redemptive and/or life-affirming something or other. Give Scorsese credit for resisting the urge to go after-school-special on us, but perhaps ask if he needed that many scenes of Jonah Hill whacked out on quaaludes.

American Hustle, meanwhile, had me at hello. Or, to echo Christian Bale’s transcendently sleazy Irving Rosenfeld, from the feet up. People who’ve seen it keep telling me, “It won’t win the Oscar, but I loved it,” but I think you raise a valid point about the fun factor that worked on behalf of Slumdog and The Departed. Like those movies, and the final Lord of the Rings installment, this one can also be spun as a referendum on the director’s last few efforts—and those efforts are pretty damned good. The Fighter and Silver Linings Playbook were both nominated, and Silver Linings came pretty close to winning. We’ll see if the strategists at Sony are able to put together a credible “It’s his time” argument on behalf of Russell, but it shouldn’t be too hard.

Meanwhile, I can envision Hustle, like Silver Linings before it, scoring nominations in all four acting categories. I mean, you tell me who’s better in this movie: the aforementioned Christian Bale, whom I’ve been impersonating ever since the credits rolled Sunday night (“It’s gotta be the best we’ve ever done”); lead actress (andVanity Fair cover girl) Amy Adams, who defies type as a stripper turned con artist with a fake British accent; supporting actor Bradley Cooper, who keeps pinging between laughable and scary as a coke-fueled Fed with something to prove; or Jennifer Lawrence, the supporting actress who launched a thousand “she steals the movie” articles over the past week.

What do you think, Chris? If Russell notches four acting categories two years in a row, isn’t the acting branch that dominates the Academy’s membership contractually obliged to hand him Best Picture?

Rosen: What’s that, Mike? Sorry, I can’t hear you right now because I’m blasting ELO’s “10538 Overture” and daydreaming about making some paintings go missing in Spain.

Oh, right, the acting branch. Well, here’s the thing: Will the four incredibly deserving leads inAmerican Hustleactually get Oscar nominations?

If we’re nominating Bale, then he has to bump Chiwetel Ejiofor or Leonardo DiCaprio or Tom Hanks or Bruce Dern or Robert Redford or Matthew McConaughey or Idris Elba or Michael B. Jordan or Oscar Isaac or Forest Whitaker. Adams has a similar problem: That category is stacked right now with presumed locks such as Streep, Thompson, Dench, Bullock, and Blanchett. (Of the two leads, I’ll give Adams a better shot, since the buzz on August: Osage County is flagging; she could bump Queen Meryl.)

Fortunately, Lawrence is a sure thing for a nomination—I wouldn’t be surprised if she wins Best Supporting Actress. (Can Oscar voters actually resist her?) Cooper could go either way: He’s great, and it’s a great performance, but it’s also one that will certainly polarize. What I’m trying to say is that there’s a real chance American Hustle only gets one acting nomination. Does that matter? I don’t think so, if only because Adams, Bale, and Cooper might wind up being six out of five on a lot of ballots—the actor support will be there even if it’s not there.

So, American Hustlewins Best Picture, and David O. Russell wins Best Director, and everyone goes home happy except for all the people on Twitter who didn’t like American Hustle. Done and done?

Hogan:I like the enthusiasm, but your earlier argument may be the most persuasive one: There’s miles to go before this all shakes out. In the meantime, I’ll just be sitting here listening to Oscar Isaac turn Katy Perry’s “Roar” into an adorable folk song. Let’s see you top that, Bruce Dern and Robert Redford!